I always ride with the ball of my foot on the pedal. I read somewhere that you should ride with your foot flat on the pedal. Who does that?
When getting on the uni, my right foot will start out with the ball of my foot on the pedal, but when I ride in the forest and it gets heavy, like riding uphill or when it is muddy, I find I have better balance when shifting my feet, so the pedal is in the middle. Personally just as when riding a bike, I use the ball of my foot, when riding the uni on asphalt. I guess you just have to do what feels best. There aren’t really best practices for this.
If I do anything over a 1ft drop or so I move my feet forward on the pedals so I don’t flex my ankle too much. Other than that, it’s just feel. I usually ride with the ball of my foot right over the pedal spindle, just like a bike.
When I do distance I ride with the ball of my foot on the pedal. If i’m doing tricks, drops, or jumps I shift my feet so its the middle of my foot on the pedal instead.
Resopnce
when I’m doing trials, I ride with my arch on the pedal for more support. but for distance riding and the occasional muni, I ride with the ball of my foot on the pedal for more power and control.
I just always ride with the balls of my feet on the pedals. It is the most comfortable, and if I have another part of my foot on the pedal, I feel like I’m going to slip off.
Ditto. For most stuff you have more power with the ball of the foot. However, for anything where there is an increased chance of over-flexing you ankle, it’s very wise to move the foot forward more. The foot acts as a lever relative to the pedal splindle, so moving the foot back increases the forces a lot (Forgot the math, but I think non-linearly meaning moving back 2 cm probably increases the force by 4x or so).
It’s the same for freeride mountain biking where I overflexed my ankle too many times doing 3-6ft drops. I learned to land with the heel of my back foot over the pedal. Now I do the same unicycling.
Don’t know if anyone else has some “best practices” but I would say when you do anything more than a small hop or any drops or jumps you should actively try to move the foot back and try to practice and learn this way. If I’m doing a bigger drop I pretty much want my heel over the pedal on my back foot. If you land right then it won’t matter, but if you are off a bit, then the ball-over-the-pedal footing will likely result in an overextension injury. Once you injure the ankle it can take a long long time to heal and re-injury recurs then more easily, so the best thing is never to injure it in the first place.